A Picture of Two
by surestsmile
Summary: Then you can be the remedy, and I can be the enemy. [CoM LJ challenge, MaruNami]


Disclaimer: This is based on the 1sentence challenge community at LiveJournal, all themes are taken from Set **Gamma**. Marluxia and Naminé do not belong to me, they belong to Disney and Square-Enix. Please take note that I have tried to keep the characters in canon as much as possible, but it's a little difficult keeping in mind these two characters' relationship with each other. I do hope that you enjoy these sentences though.

A Picture of Two

**#01 – Ring**

He twirls her hair around his fingertips, and without warning yanks out a few strands that make her wince, and then ties the golden threads deftly into a ring and places it, almost reverently, on his finger.

**#02 – Hero**

She pines, day after day after day after day, for her hero, and he has to remind himself, day after day after day as well, that he is not, and never will be, the one she wants.

**#03 – Memory**

"Give me memories," he says to her, and somehow, she knows it's not the kind that she draws with crayons and markers and pencils on yellowed paper, and twists her mouth, almost unhappily, and he laughs, and lets it go.

**#04 – Box**

Four-by-white-walled-four, it is her cage and his shelter in the coming storm.

**#05 – Run**

"Would you leave me? Would you run from me?" he asks into her ear, breath tickling, and she squirms in his arms, and slowly shakes her head in reply.

**#06 – Hurricane**

When Marluxia cradles her to his chest, Naminé thinks she can hear, over the voices of shrieking winds and crackling leaves and branches that made up of what Marluxia is, the very, very small sound of a child crying.

**#07 – Wings**

Larxene's fingers are sharp as her words as they run down her back, mocking, "Has little Naminé grown her angel wings yet?" when the digging nails suddenly lifted, and Marluxia's voice is saying, almost lethally quiet, "What are you doing?"

**#08 – Cold**

Her shakes and shivers are more of a result of sitting still, hunched over a piece of paper for too long, and he covers her with one of his own coats, and rubs her shoulders through them for warmth.

**#09 – Red**

Axel reminds her too closely of blood and wolves and fire, things that could hurt you and kill you, and she finds herself hiding safely behind Marluxia's outstretched arm as the other man bowed and introduced himself.

**#10 – Drink**

It's the first time she's seen Marluxia pissed-drunk, rosy-cheeked and babbling incoherent mutterings and smiling almost sweetly at her as she tries to heft him up to his bed, and she thinks he's almost likeable inebriated until she catches a whiff of his _sake_ breath.

**#11 – Midnight**

The Castle is white and it makes it difficult for her to sleep, even with her eyes closed because of the brightness, and somehow the only way she's able to find rest was to hide within Marluxia's arms, face pressed into the deep darkness that were the things he wore.

**#12 – Temptation**

She is too young for him, yes, (_no_) and he tries to content himself with kisses on her forehead, instead of somewhere else.

**#13 – View**

They have nothing to look at besides four white walls and a ceiling and a floor, and so she creates views from her pictures, things like the sea and beaches and the sun and clouds, and make believes that they exist.

**#14 – Music**

He likes it when she sings, off-tune and lyric-less and somehow he finds himself adding his own baritone to her voice, almost shyly, and her eyes widen in surprise.

**#15 – Silk**

"Like silk," she whispers, mostly to herself, combing patiently through the mass of brown hair and hearing Marluxia purr.

**#16 – Cover**

All these little games they play with each other, the little allowances he makes for her, the freedom she gives him to her person...they wonder if it's all just a cover in the end.

**#17 – Promise**

"That's a pretty promise you're drawing for yourself," he remarks bitterly, and she says nothing.

**#18 – Dream**

She says she dreams of "paopu" and islands and happiness, and he sneers at her, deeply jealous that she could still remember what she had been, and all he had was just an empty echo.

**#19 – Candle**

He is drawn to her, moth to a candle flame, with her purity and her innocence, and though he wants to taint it (destroy it, make her one of their own, make her _his_), he knows he won't allow himself to do it.

**#20 – Talent**

When she draws, he is silenced, mesmerised by her hands sketching out quick concepts, and then filling in lines and colours as though they were being born, until the memories created at the end felt almost _real_.

**#21 – Silence**

"The absence of my heart doesn't scare me," he laughs, and she blinks as he bends close to her ear, "Not when I have your pretty voice to fill in the silence."

**#22 – Journey**

He is dead and she is alive (she is _free_), but that realisation doesn't make her steps any lighter as she holds her hand out to the dawn.

**#23 – Fire**

Axel's gleefully burning a road for her to walk, through the darkness and the _sakura_, through the lies and the promises and the deceit, and she finds herself wondering when exactly her loyalties had changed.

**#24 – Strength**

"It's because you're a girl," he says, playing with her hair, "you'll always, always need someone to give you the strength you possess."

**#25 – Mask**

She wonders which is the real him, the one who brings her food and books and paper and tries to make her smile, or the one who mocks her openly in front of his colleagues and laughs as cruelly as they do.

**#26 – Ice**

"Give her to me," the scientist says, looking at her with those cold jaded eyes, and somehow she's glad that Marluxia wraps his arms around her possessively, voice snarling out in heat, "No."

**#27 – Fall**

She knows that he's falling further and faster, deeper and deeper into visions and nightmares and it's getting harder to pull him out with her hands and her voice and her tears, and she fears the day that he might bring her down with him, just so the both of them won't be lonely anymore.

**#28 – Forgotten**

He makes the _sakura_ bloom before her, leaves and buds uncurling slowly and she inhales, eyes bright, and for a moment they forget themselves, she at his flowers, he at her smile.

**#29 – Dance**

_He is dancing_, she thinks, his scythe cutting through the falling flowers in a silent arc, brow furrowed deep in concentration, _and he is beautiful_ and she doesn't bother to convince herself otherwise.

**#30 – Body**

When nobodies die, there is nothing left, he tells her, nothing like scent or sound and certainly not _bodies_, and only memories remain, and what are memories when there is no one alive who'd bother to remember who you were?

**#31 – Sacred**

"There is no god here for you to pray to," he says, and she sighs, playing with a lock of his hair, and replies, "I don't believe in gods."

**#32 – Farewells**

He bids her farewell in a string of curses that she doesn't take to heart, after all, he is no longer the Marluxia she once knew, and that goodbye had been said long ago (in his last kiss, maybe, or the lingering light in his eyes) and she's sad about the fact that she had never noticed it (until now) and it's just all too late.

**#33 – World**

"I don't remember anything," he said dully, "nothing except for this Castle. This world is all we have to call our own now."

**#34 – Formal**

He drew back his hood, revealing deep blue eyes nearly hooded by a mass of dark brown hair, and bowed deeply to her before intoning stiffly, "I am Marluxia."

**#35 – Fever**

She can't help staring at him (how could she, when he just...ghosted in like nobody's business and wearing nothing but two towels, one over his hair and the other..._not going there_) and she could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, and he's padding over to her and bending and, "You look a little flushed, Naminé. You're not sick, are you?" and she thinks she just might pass out.

**#36 – Laugh**

It _scares_ her, the high, helpless laughter of his, when he spins around crazily in the center of the room and rambles about Keyblade Masters and puppets and Kingdom Hearts in-between, choking almost into tears; it _scares_ her, that she cannot doing anything to stop it from happening over and over again, more and more, that all she could do is sit and watch, listen and be silenced.

**#37 – Lies**

"He loves you!" Larxene shrieks, hands sweeping over her drawings and spilling them all over the floor, and she shakes her head, so hard that her vision blurs while she chants the same refrain over and over in her mind _lies, lies, all lies_ and then all she can feel is pain as Larxene slaps her, once, twice, before the world mercifully blackens on her.

**#38 – Forever**

Seconds dissolve into minutes that blur into hours and melt into days and weeks and months and perhaps it would contract back to just a single second, Naminé could never be sure of how time worked in the Castle, and she wonders if Nobodies like Marluxia would ever age or die or just remain as forever.

**#39 – Overwhelmed**

He has her pinned to the wall, one hand curled in hers, and he's so close (count his eyelashes one by one) that she can't look away.

**#40 – Whisper**

His voice haunts her _Naminé Naminé Naminénaminénaminaminami-_, echoing quietly beneath her skin and thrumming in her bones and she thinks it's worse now that he's dead because it's the only thing left that she can still remember about him.

**#41 – Wait**

"He's coming," he says, and she looks at him questioningly and squeaks when he grips her chin, "Your hero. Your wait is over."

**#42 – Talk**

Contrary to what the rest of the Order thinks, they don't really talk much in each other's presence, not when she's drawing and he's quietly looking over her shoulder.

**#43 – Search**

"You will help me," he said, "because what you are looking for and what I'm looking for are the same things; the keys to our freedom. We'll do anything to get it. Anything. And so, you see, dear Naminé, we're not so very different after all."

**#44 – Hope**

Marluxia says that he doesn't believe in hope, but Naminé thinks, _but it is hope that has brought you this far, otherwise you wouldn't be here now._

**#45 – Eclipse**

They're not really shadows, no - there is no light in shadow, but Naminé knows that she could sometimes see a different Marluxia, perhaps a Marluxia that once lived, like the golden rim of the sun hiding behind the moon.

**#46 – Gravity**

"Let us make it clear from the beginning, Naminé. They did not force me to become your guardian. I _chose_ you."

**#47 – Highway**

There were limits to how far darkness could take them without swallowing them up, even as Nobodies, and so Marluxia was treated to the endearing sight of Naminé pressing her nose up against the glass of their ship, momentarily fascinated by the gummi highway.

**#48 – Unknown**

"Where are we?" she asked him, and he replied, "The world that never was."

**#49 – Lock**

She wished he had a heart, a heart whose heavy chains she could take and unpick and bind again, and lock away his nightmares and his sadness and his madness, and maybe then he wouldn't have died chasing after shadows and ghosts.

**#50 - Breathe**

He bends on one knee before her, brushing her hair away from her face and she only has a few seconds to look at him questioningly before he presses close, and lips are suddenly brushing gently and so lightly against hers, and it steals her breath away.


End file.
